NYCB shines in Robbins' 'Dances at a Gathering'

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- In 1969, Jerome Robbins returned to the New York City Ballet after 13 years pursuing other projects, including "West Side Story," "Fiddler on the Roof" and numerous theater and dance experiments. He wanted to start simply, choreographing a Chopin piano pas de deux, but the new work kept growing, becoming "Dances at a Gathering," perhaps his greatest ballet.

Friday night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NYCB superbly danced this work for 10 performers. It starts with deceptive simplicity. A few high clouds float in the blue. Joaquin De Luz walks on, a slow mazurka playing. He starts moving rhythmically to the music and enters the dance, refreshing as a cool stream.

His dance, like much of "Dances," feels vaguely European; maybe it's his boots, or the Chopin, lovingly played by Susan Walter. It's also vaguely nostalgic, yearning for a past where everything once made sense. As he performs high-leaping turns and launches into jetés, he seems to have come home. Exiting, he touches his finger to his head -- "Yes, that feels right."

Yet it's also an American ballet about community by this great American-born choreographer. As dance follows dance for a marvelous hour, friendships form, flirtations falter and revive, rivalries simmer and thoughts and feelings harmonize.

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Adrian Danchig-Waring dances side-by-side with Sara Mearns, then whirls her about and supports her in little leaps. Jared Angle hoists Tiler Peck up high, then partners her in around-the-back lifts.

Antonio Carmena athletically pursues Megan Fairchild, reaching for her; she spins away and he spins after, then lifts her horizontally onto his shoulders. Finally convinced, she exits leaping flat out into his arms. Jigging backwards, De Luz and Angle spiral in towards each other, then initiate a friendly competition that grows testy. They spiral back apart.

The dancers strike us almost as real people interacting, even though we marvel at their skill on pointe, or in difficult lifts and leaps. Robbins weaves their virtuosity into the texture of daily life in this bucolic world, where gathering is unimaginable without dancing.

The ballet remains sunny yet profound, taking even disappointment comically in stride. Maria Kowroski dances lightly and fetchingly for three men who -- unbelievably -- show no interest in her; one even runs away. But nothing turns tragic: pausing, bemused, on one pointe, she smiles, shrugs, flicks her wrists, exits.

The dances lengthen, growing more complex. In one, Danchig-Waring, Angle and Christian Tworzyanski carry Peck, Mearns and Brittany Pollack in beautiful floating lifts. In an ecstatic waltz, three men partner three women, first in low lifts, then in high and higher lifts, before the dance climaxes in three increasingly daring tosses: Mearns in arabesque, Pollack horizontally, and Fairchild in a spinning flip that turns her upside down.

Robbins imprints a series of indelible images in this restorative ballet, which recalls Robert Frost's words: "Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole beyond confusion."

Peter Martins' fine "Hallelujah Junction" returned, as did Christopher Wheeldon's "After the Rain" pas de deux, which Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall perform sensitively and eerily, raw as embryonic beings. Holly Hynes' simple leotards, with their near-nude look, and Arvo Part's tenderly rocking music help make their dance feel like a cradle song for civilization.